The ceremony for the Parsec Awards for podcasts has been hosted by Dragon Con for a decade, but the organizers recently announced plans to begin holding a livestreamed virtual ceremony instead sometime in November (date TBA).

They raised the idea a few months ago and surveyed award supporters for their reaction.

By dissociating the awards with Dragon*Con, we feel that more of our community will be able to participate. No longer will travel to Atlanta be a prerequisite for presenters, entertainers or recipients. Many of those who attended Dragon*Con even found their schedules did not allow their attendance at the awards. We also feel that we can have a better chance of securing judges’ time when we are not smack in the middle of Con season as we can now have some flexibility in scheduling the awards.

One commenter asked why not do both – livestream a ceremony held at the con – and was answered “We have tried streaming the awards at D*C and have always had unreliable service and a poor experience for remote participants.”

Meantime, nominations for the Parsec Award are open and will continue through June 1, 2017. There are 15 award categories. Eligible nominees must fit this definition:

What is a “podcast”?

For the purposes of the Parsec Awards, we consider a podcast to be audio or video (“vidcasts”) delivered as part of a syndicated series streamed online or can be downloaded, via RSS feeds, podcast aggregators, or services such as YouTube or SoundCloud. Listeners or viewers must be able to subscribe to updates that are either delivered automatically or are made available to the subscriber in some aggregated format, free of charge during our eligibility period (May 1, 2016- April 30, 2017).